Les Vieux espions vous saluent bien

Like the agents in this movie, many of the actors in this movie were reactivated. Roles for OAP thespians are pretty thin on the ground -- and have always been. In the case of Jürgen Prochnow, this is practically the first time I have seen him since Das Boot.

The plot idea is brilliant -- Germany's secret service has a serious problem in far-away "Kadschikistan" and has to reactivate a troupe of former East German agents for their "contacts in the field".

Like in so many German comedies, they sort of forgot about a small but esssential ingredient -- a good script, ideally one containing witty dialogues. So off they fly into some former Soviet boondocks where everybody speaks with excessively guttural accents, and women are treated like in a Channel 4 documentary. The former nemeses (plural of Nemesis, I looked it up) eventually rally together against a common foe, roll credits. Frankly, I suspect that German movies suffer from too much benevolent public financing, and not enough I-want-my-money-back investors.